The Miles InBetween
by Acerbitas
Summary: She didn’t think he had to go, but knew he thought he must. ReksxPenelo


Title: The Miles In-between  
Fandom: FFXII  
Rating: PG  
Word count: 1,400 +/-  
Pairing: ReksxPenelo  
Summary: She didn't think he had to go, but knew he thought he must.

Warnings: Uhhh…it's depressing?  
Spoilers: Actually, none, whatsoever. Unless you consider the first hour of cut scenes spoilarage.

A/N: For mariagoner on LJ! Umm…exactly a month after V-day. That's really sad, Ariel. Sending you love anyway? Hope you enjoy it and it isn't too dreadful! Thank you for the help with chronology!

Considering Reks had like six lines, I had to make stuff up about his personality. Hopefully I drew upon his past and those deep, meaningful six lines correctly! He seems like a good, honest boy who just had to grow up way to fast. At least I think so. :/

I'm assuming Penelo's parents are dead at this point? I've looked at all the ages and stuff but I just can't figure it out. They were there when Vaan (and apparently Reks) moved in after their parents died of plague! So by the time Reks leaves in this story they are already pwned, sorry if I am mistaken! But Penelo's brother is still alive, because I made her not start dancing yet. Apparently. The chronology is so vague. XD Wikipedia has failed me? WTF, man.

**The Miles In-between**

The dull shine of streetlamps sent an eerie glow over the streets. Reks kicked a pebble, and smiled as it bounced before tumbling down a gutter. His pockets jingled confidently, and he stuck his hands down inside them to reassure himself of a job well done. Vaan would ask for dumplings tomorrow, and he would say, sure, there is plenty enough for that.

Nobody needed to know where the money had come from, and he liked to forget himself. Reks had always prided himself in his honesty, had always told Vaan to 'get a decent job.' But Vaan couldn't get a decent job if he couldn't eat, and Penelo's brother expected him to contribute to the household income and to pay for Vaan and in the process. Vaan worked as best he could, but it was Reks who paid the rent.

Men turned into soldiers and left, and the ones that returned, returned injured in either body or mind. Jobs were left vacant and open for the taking, but crops suffered, and prices soared. A decent boy doing a decent job was only able to stay decent if he wasn't the one providing for his family. And so Reks became whatever he had to be, and the more he did what he had thought he would never have to do, the angrier he became.

The dull pang of missing his parents grew into an agonizing fear of failing his sibling, which grew into hatred of the Empire. The Empire became a vague and menacing concept towards which he poured all his stress, rage and hate.

And then there was Penelo, the anti-Empire, the cheerful girl who took everything in stride. As he fretted in serious contemplation, she would bounce to his side and bring a smile to his face, which had grown unsurprisingly serious over the past few years.

Stepping into what he grudging admitted was home, he shook his semi-wet cloak and hung it onto a hook. Tugging a chair out and flopping into its questionable comfort, he tapped his fingers against the table. It was rather late at night, but he assumed that Penelo was still up doing chores or somesuch. He smiled at the thought.

Men marched out to war but only some of them returned. Men marched out to war, but they didn't know how to use the swords strapped to their sides.

A hand touched his shoulder, and he jumped.

"Whatcha thinking?" Penelo asked in a way that made him sure she knew exactly. He knew she knew what he was thinking. The point was that she didn't want him thinking about it anymore.

"Nothing important," he would say with a grin, meaning, of course, that he didn't want to worry her. Of course it was important, and she knew it. She knew what was shining in his eyes when he watched another platoon of barely-soldiers march off to battle. He knew she disapproved. He didn't know when their fragile silence on the matter was going to snap. Everyday, it seemed like he was going to open his mouth and say it.

"Oh really?" Penelo's arms encircled his shoulders, and he felt heat creeping slowly over his cheeks and nose. He forced himself to remember she was innocent, and her physical affection meant nothing more than the simple warmth her presence radiated. "Come on, I need you to help me with the laundry."

"Alright." Reks pulled her gently off of him and stood, fingers sliding over rough splinters. Whenever they would sit together with Vaan, he liked to imagine that they were a sort of family, despite how screwed up that really was when he thought about it. Well actually, he didn't know anymore, if that was screwed up. She was the same age as Vaan, and she had an older brother, so she didn't need to pretend that she was the parent.

And that's why! That's why it was screwed up.

But he still thought about it anyway.

Her hand knit into his, a gesture of familiarity he tried to take objectively. Reks thought perhaps that she did somehow like him, in that silly way that young girls like a boy. He had jumped from boyhood to manhood in so short of a time he didn't really remember the things that had happened in-between. He vaguely remembered that fluttery feeling he felt for the flower girl. The sweet little flower girl who grew sores and died in a trash heap. He had liked her in that fluttery way. But she had died and he knew that the feelings he had now were far too serious for what they were worth.

"Today Migelo paid me quite a bit!" Penelo feet bounced loudly against the wood. "And Vaan did more than I expected him to do. It was a good day. Yours?"

He wondered why he was so serious and she was so light. "It was fine," he told her, semi-truthfully, smiling the way he smiled when she was around. It was a nice smile. "It was great." But she wasn't all light inside. Nobody can be all light, inside and out. She had experienced the same things that he had experienced.

"What did you do?" She grinned and leaned over a sodden pile of newly washed clothes. If she left them out to dry outside, they would be stolen, so instead she hung them in the cellar. Reks found himself not amused by the irony.

His silence told more than enough. She handed him some clothes, and he began to pin them onto a mangy cord that they had strung from barrel to barrel. The silence stretched miles between them. "Penelo—"

"Yes?" She frowned at him, disapproving, but it faded into a soft smile.

"I have to protect Vaan from the Empire."

"You can do that here, well enough, eh?" She was still trying to be cheerful, motivational. Sometimes he didn't know how she did it. But however she did it, it was beautiful.

"No, I can't! They're coming here, and it will be partly my fault if I don't do anything about it!" The earnestness in his voice scared him, no, chilled him to the bone. There was a boy inside of him, screaming, begging to be able to _something _while his parents shook on their beds of cloth. If he couldn't help them, then by God he could revenge them.

"What if you die, huh? Who's going to look after him then?" She nearly threw some clothes at him. Penelo swallowed, dryly; the look in her eyes was frightening. She was helpless too.

They were helpless together, but that small sameness did not bring him any closer to her. She seemed far away as he looked at her small form digging through the heap. "He's as old as you. He can take care of himself. I took care of both of us when I was younger than he w—"

"—Do you want him to lose you like we lost our parents?" Penelo whirled on him, but he could tell she wasn't really angry at him. She was angry at the big abyss of nothing that he was angry at.

A clothespin snapped at empty air, and Reks bit his lip with frustration. "I don't want them to get him! I want to revenge my parents!" That's what he really wanted, wasn't it? Revenge against the big abyss of nothing.

"And who is them?" Penelo let out a shaky breath.

"Them! The Empire, the ones who did this to us!" He stared at her like she was somehow stupid. He couldn't come up with a perfect definition of what 'this' was, in all truthfulness, but it was bad. It made his empty stomach sick.

"The Empire is not going to come and kidnap Vaan from his bed!"

He opened his mouth helplessly and shrugged at her logic. Taking some offered clothes, he moved down the line in silence. The miles in-between them multiplied endlessly. He wanted to be thirteen again, when everything had been going okay. When everything had been normal. Normal and sane. "I have to go." He wanted her hand in his, warm and tender.

"Do you?" That question was funny, because it held so much, so delicately, with those two words. She didn't think he had to go, but she knew he knew he had to go.

"Yes."

"Okay. But come back, ne?" She smiled, but fallen tears shimmered on her lips. Her hands clutched at a sweater with fervent desperation.

"Okay," he promised, and told himself his promise wasn't empty. The cloths hung limply from the rope like voodoo dolls, like bodies strung out and left to rot in the sun.

A/N: Well that was rather emo. In other news, I see arrows when I close my eyes. Maybe playing DDR for hours isn't the best way to spend spring break.


End file.
